


Wolfsbane is a flower too.

by MusketTerrier



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adopted Children, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Loss, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 07:29:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26968273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusketTerrier/pseuds/MusketTerrier
Summary: A woman that has lost everyone she ever loved. A man that doesn't belong anywhere. And learning to form a family in an unconventional way.
Relationships: Petunia Evans Dursley & Harry Potter, Petunia Evans Dursley/Remus Lupin
Kudos: 9





	Wolfsbane is a flower too.

**Author's Note:**

> This idea hit me and for once I decided to upload it somewhere. I'm rusty in my writing, so any constructive criticism is more than welcome. I'll try to get a chapter up a week, but life may get in the way of that.

Loss was the only constant in her life, it seemed. Or those were the words that came to Petunia’s mind, and her very soul, as she tossed a single, purple hyacinth over the coffin of her late husband. She didn’t even register the words that came out of Marjorie’s mouth, as the brute of a woman patted her on the shoulder, the meaty hand hurting her in a way that she almost welcomed because at least it was a different kind of pain.

The Ceremony was small, traditional, and oh so sterile. Vernon would have loved it, she thinks, and she can’t hold back a bitter laugh that earns her some very mean looks from her family in law. Or those who were her family in law, she figures, if the cold words that Vernon’s father had said to her about inheritance rang true with all of them. If she wasn’t pregnant, she shouldn’t even contact them in the future. 

As she was driven back to that big house on Number 4, Privet Drive, she hesitated before opening the door into the empty living room. They had bought this place three days before he passed, he had been so happy with his latest promotion they had walked right to the Real State office and gotten a place where they could raise a good, proper british family, the envy of the entire neighborhood. Now all she was going to be was the objective of polite nothings, displays of… and the word turned to ash in her mind, soiling her very soul, charity that would come. She already dreaded them.

As she walked through the mostly empty house, she couldn’t help but allow herself another bitter laugh, this one loud and full of emotions that she had been holding back for years, more than a decade now. First she’d lost her sister, to that world that had refused to take her. Then she lost her parents, to disease and grief, one after the other. And now she had lost her husband to a brick. A brick that fell off the hand of some clumsy worker. She had always suspected she had been born to be some sort of cosmic joke. This had only confirmed all of her suspicions and her fears. 

Vernon hadn’t been buried for 24 hours before the construction company was at her door, with false smiles on their faces, and checks with more money than she had ever seen to keep silent about some failure in the security measures. She signed what they put in front of her more than anything to get them off her property. Her property. What should have been their house. Petunia is tempted to use the check to light her fireplace for the first time. She decides against it, and cashes it in the next day. She ignores all the phone calls from Vernon’s family asking for a cut. Telling her they are family. 

She is late. She knows it, and she is never late, and like a fool she lets hope grow in her belly, the idea of a child, a last gift from her beloved that would keep her company during these dark times. She pictures a boy with her blonde hair, as she lays on the floor of the kitchen, her back against the new, fancy fridge she bought to keep all the ‘widow dishes’ that neighbours send her. A fridge that would have cost a few weeks of salary from Vernon’s old job, now made not even a smidge of a dent in her accounts. She thinks she’d rather be in their old apartment, listening to Vernon about all the things he would buy her once the higher ups at Grunnings realized all the potential he had. 

She gets her period a week later. And she weeps till she out of tears. Then she weeps some more.

* * *

For the next six months she almost doesn’t see the sunlight. She ignores letters from her sister, who somehow has learned about what happened to her and seems to be stretching a hand to try and fix the relationship between the two. She doesn’t even dare to hope that would happen. For all she knows, the moment she and her sister mend their little family (and it’s so little now. Just the two of them, and Lily’s husband, whatever his name is) that too will be taken away from her.

She puts all that money into different banks, and pays a man Vernon trusted, the closest thing he had to a friend, to invest it wisely. She’ll never be a millionaire, but she won’t ever have to work, if she doesn’t want to. She only uses money to keep herself alive, and even then sometimes she forgets to eat, and to keep the house painted and the lawn mown. Because as much as she doesn’t care, dealing with the neighbours would be way, way worse. 

It’s around eight months after her Vernon is gone that she starts having more of a social circle again. Not the housewives of the neighborhood, oh no, for she can only tolerate mentions of cousins and brothers so much. But the old man around the corner, who keeps himself busy by fixing things around his house, and now Petunia’s in exchange for a cup of tea and a good chat. The lady that washes her clothes and cleans her house, Maria is her name, becomes sort of a friend too. She stays a few hours after she is done, and they talk about nothing and everything. When she mentions her son, she listens with a sad smile on her face.

Christmas and New Years Eve come and go. She sends Lily a single card with some cash, as both a late wedding gift and a Christmas one. She doesn’t even open what her sister sent her. Not that she had a tree to put it under anyway. Most of her house is still empty, and that’s how she likes it, to be honest. It allows enough room for all her ghosts. And that’s pretty much all she has most lonely nights.

The one year anniversary comes and goes. She visits his tomb once, and leaves flowers over his it, arranged perfectly. Paying for maintenance is easier than going herself. From what the employees of the cemetery tell her, none of Vernon’s relatives visit the tomb either. In a way that would have been what he would have wanted, she figures. 

Her life is a daze till the 30th of July. When a bird makes its way into her house, leaving a hastily scribbled letter on her floor, sitting on her window and staring at her, as in daring her to open said letter. There, someone that needed some calligraphy lessons tells her that she is gonna be an aunt in the next few hours, and that if she wishes to meet him or her, to just scribble an answer and give it to Athena. Apparently the owl had a name.

She thinks about it, she really does. Biting her lower lip hard enough to draw blood as she balanced the yearning in her heart for her family, as small as it was, and the cold, logical fact that getting close to anyone was a death sentence. Finally, she opens the front window for the owl (and that earns her some questions from neighbours for days, and a visit of some government officials about the state she was keeping her property) with a simple, short letter full of excuses and nonsense to justify herself not going. She does ask to know the sex and the name, if they’ll tell her, so she knows what to send for christmas. 

That decision would haunt her for the rest of her days, for that was the last chance she ever got to see her sister alive (That’s a lie. She could always have gone. But it’s easier to tell herself that).

* * *

The rest of 1980 is a haze. She doesn’t remember doing much more than taking walks, reading books and going to the old man’s funeral. Of course, just a few weeks later, Maria’s child gets sick, and she just can’t come to work anymore. She doesn’t hear from the woman again. She sent Harry, for that was her nephew, a small book of children's stories, since the written words had become her only companion, and the only thing she thought about sharing with a little ball of joy. A baby.

The year after is more of the same. All the letters she got are from banks, congratulating her on just how well her accounts were going, and from the man that managed her investments, a cold, standardized notice telling her that he had sold or bought something or the other, and that he had deposited the earnings on some account or the other. Oh, and from the library, after she once again forgot to return a book. She just sent them money to buy the books. Old ones smelled better anyway.

She buys her first piece of actual furniture in may. A Bookcase to store her growing collection. By August, right after sending Harry another book, she has to buy a second one, and she decides that a chair to go with it would be a good idea. She lights the chimney for the first time in late September, and she finds that she enjoys the warmth. For the first time in many years, while not happy, she feels content. 

She even leaves some candy out for the children on Halloween, even if she doesn’t open the door herself. Loneliness had become a welcome companion, separating her from the world, and from those that could hurt her.

She spends all of the 1st of November out for the first time in years. She removes the standard decorations that all houses on the street share, and she cleans rests of candy wrappers from her yard. A few of her neighbours look at her weird, but no one seems to focus on her, not with the small, old lady that just moved in with oh so many cats around the corner. A small part of her wonders if she should go and say hello. She decides against it. One of her cats seemed to have come to say hello anyway, and she gave it an odd look after a while. She was quite sure cats weren’t supposed to be so stiff.

Petunia doesn’t go to her bed that night. Instead she stays covered with blankets near the fire, a book on the floor, having fallen from her hand as she dozed to sleep. The cracking of the flame is so that she doesn’t hear the conversation outside of her door. So when she wakes up the morning after, stiff and in pain from sleeping at a weird position, she almost doesn’t notice the letter or the baby that was holding it with his little fist, when she goes to take the milk bottles.

Then she screams. And her entire world falls apart once more, right in front of her house. She forgets to care about the people watching her weep.

* * *

Remus Lupin was powerless. That seemed to be the theme of his life. He had been powerless at the mercy of a beast, and that had changed his life for the worst. He had been powerless to help his mother through her disease, or his father through his grief. He had buried both of them on the same hill over their house. And now he had been powerless to stop any of the ones he loved to be hurt.

He had been deep in werewolf territory, gathering information for Albus, and thus, he didn’t learn of what happened till a few weeks after, the order knew that sending him a message carelessly would have been a death sentence. It doesn’t make him less bitter about the way things went.

He doesn’t get to be there for James and Lily’s funeral, or to console Mrs.Pettigrew as they bury the one bit of flesh left of her son. He doesn’t even get to punch Sirius on his traitorous faces before they send him to Azkaban, and not even his seething hatred would make him go to that damned island willingly.

He tells himself that he is gonna ask where Harry is tomorrow. He has been saying that for a week. He hopes that one day he won’t be powerless and finally check on the last living piece of his dear friends.


End file.
